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Overcoming the challenges of kiosk deployments: Part 3

December 2, 2011 by Natsumi Nakamura — Marketing, PFU Systems

In our last two blog posts, we listed the three greatest challenges that organizations often face in kiosk projects, and discussed the first two: stakeholders and technical components.

In Part 3 of this series, we'll discuss the challenges of post-deployment technical and operational issues.

As we mentioned in Part 2 of this series, there are a number of technical components in a kiosk system, including the hardware components, enclosures, computer system, I/O devices, software components and integration. Let's see how the reliability of the each component affects the overall reliability of the kiosk system.

To make it simple, we'll assume that each of the following kiosk components has 99.9 pecent availability.

• CPU, Memory, Hard disk, Cooling fans, Power.
• Touch panel, Printer, Card reader, Barcode reader.=
• Internet connection, OS, Kiosk middleware, Kiosk application, Backend system

In most cases, if even one of the components has a problem, the kiosk system cannot provide a thorough service. For example, if the card reader cannot read the customer's card, he/she won't be able to finish the transaction.

Since there are 14 components in this example, the entire kiosk system availability drops to 98.61 percent (99.9 percent raised to the power of 14), which translates into 5.07 days of downtime per year.

Kiosk downtime has a tremendously negative impact on your business - lost revenue, damage to the brand image, stalled operations, costs of repairing, and customer dissatisfaction - just to name a few.

What can an organization do to reduce unscheduled downtime?

Reliable kiosk system

Primarily, we recommend ensuring the quality of the kiosk hardware and software before the implementation. Please see the Part 2 of this series for more details.

Early detection 

You want to avoid a situation in which a kiosk malfunction is not addressed for days, weeks, or even months. (Sadly, most of us have seen this in the real life.)

The earlier a problem is detected, the earlier an action can be taken to solve it. The most common, and probably most effective, solution to this is to install remote management software that allows a kiosk manager/administrator to view the status of kiosks remotely and in real time.

Remote diagnosis

The more details you know about the problem, the more quickly you can solve it. If a kiosk's remote monitoring system can identify, troubleshoot and diagnose problems, a kiosk service engineer can prepare and bring necessary parts and tools to address the identified issues. Without this capability, the service engineer has to go to the kiosk site to diagnose the problem, and come back again with right parts and tools, which results in higher repair costs and longer downtime.

Multiple kiosks

Installing more than one kiosk at one location also increases the availability of kiosk service. The chance of two kiosks being out service at the same time is very low assuming that the network and central server are reliable.

Proactive maintenance

One more way to reduce unscheduled downtime is to conduct maintenance and replace the component before they cause problems. The examples of proactive maintenance include:

• Clean card reader regularly.
• Change roll paper when it is near the end.
• Replace components such as printer paper cutter and hard disk before they reach their life cycle

It is challenging to know exactly when to conduct these maintenance steps for organizations. Having a mechanism to keep track of the component usage and send notification (such as an email alert) for recommended maintenance certainly helps.

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